Presidential candidate and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) on Wednesday scolded some of his former colleagues at Fox News for denouncing Pam Geller and the Muhammad cartoon contest she held in Garland, Texas.
Fox News host Bill O’Reilly criticized Geller for holding such a provocative event and said he would have done it “another way.” And Fox host Greta Van Susteren said the cartoon contest “recklessly” put police lives in danger.
“I understand why they would come to that conclusion, but I disagree with it because you do not blame the victim of a crime for the crime committed by a murdering criminal,” Huckabee told Newsmax TV’s Steve Malzberg. “I’m a Christian, Steve. I get offended every day by things people say about me and my faith. I don’t want to murder anyone over it.”
Instead, Huckabee said that the gunmen who were killed when they opened fire on officers outside the cartoon contest should be blamed for the violence at the event.
“I don’t blame organizers of a free speech event for the fact that some radical Islamic savages decided to just go and mow down a bunch of people. I find that just bizarre,” he said.
Watch the clip below via Newsmax TV. Malzberg asks Huckabee about O’Reilly and Van Susteren at the 6:15 mark.
H/t Mediaite
I never thought I’d back Gov. Hucklebee on anything but I will say the same thing I said after Charlie Hebdo attacks: There is a time for criticizing those who abuse their free speech rights by gratuitously insulting and seeking to provoke religious believers, but all debate ends, IMO, when those believers turn to violence.
Free speech : yes , but not when violence is attributable to it .
So if a theater critic calls an actor’s performance dreadful and said actor throttles said critic, the “violence [was] attributable to it”?
“I don’t blame organizers of a free speech event for the fact that some radical Islamic savages decided to just go and mow down a bunch of people. I find that just bizarre,” he said.
Is “radical Islamic savages” used to distinguish the shooters from “moderate Islamic savages”?
I suppose the Governor would say that those who fire bomb an abortion clinic are 100% to blame, with no blame attaching to the “abortionists.”
“I’m a Christian, Steve. I get offended every day by things people say about me and my faith. I don’t want to murder anyone over it.”
Of course not, you ignoramus. And just because there are murderous Christians like Eric Robert Rudolph, James Charles Kopp, Jim David Adkisson, Scott Roeder, the Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Army of God, and Generals Peter Pace and Jerry Boykin, we don’t implicate your bigoted lying fat punk ass for their propensity to murder in the name of your savior.